Buildertrend and The Home Depot: A partnership for pros

Tom Houghton:

You’re listening to “The Building Code,” your guide for a better way to run your business. I’m Tom Houghton.

Paul Wurth:

Hey everybody, I’m Paul Wurth.

Tom Houghton:

Paul, welcome. Back together again.

Paul Wurth:

Back at it. Boy, we got a big one today.

Tom Houghton:

We do. This is an exciting one for us, because we’re talking with Frank Blake from The Home Depot.

Paul Wurth:

Ever heard of them?

Tom Houghton:

I sure have.

Paul Wurth:

That’s a big company.

Tom Houghton:

It’s kind of a big deal.

Paul Wurth:

Big name in the space. Excited.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. So, let’s talk with Frank about this new partnership with Buildertrend.

Paul Wurth:

Let’s do it.

Tom Houghton:

Frank, give us a little introduction to yourself and your career there.

Frank Blake:

Yeah, thanks, Tom. Thanks for having me on the show. I want to begin by saying I’m a long-time listener. I’m a long-time listener, long-time fan, I’ve spent many countless hours going over your guys’ episodes. I think, is this episode 80? So, it’s a very successful show and I am honored and thrilled to be on it. I should also mention before I get into my background, look, I’m a fan of the show, but I think is it accurate to say that this all began with the 2016 viral video of carpool karaoke? Is that an accurate statement? I don’t know.

Tom Houghton:

Wow. Carpool karaoke, getting a shout out on the podcast. It’s been a while for that one.

Paul Wurth:

Going deep into your catalog, Tom.

Tom Houghton:

Seriously.

Paul Wurth:

That was one of the first videos, there you go.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. Well-

Frank Blake:

So they told me, “Hey, you can record this wherever you are.” I want you guys to know I’m actually outside in front of my house on the sidewalk, hoping that your big grand caravan pulls up. I got my songs all ready, I’m ready to rock and roll when you guys are.

Tom Houghton:

Awesome. Well, I’ll hop in the van after we’re done recording. It might take me a little bit to get to you, but we’ll make sure we definitely do that.

Frank Blake:

I’m ready, Tom.

Paul Wurth:

That’s great.

Tom Houghton:

Awesome.

Paul Wurth:

Now, we’re going to have to put that in the show notes.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah, we’ll put a link to the video in the show notes, buildertrend.com/podcast. Also if you haven’t joined us on our Facebook group, we’ve got The Building Code Crew. You can check out the video there, we’ll post it in The Building Code Crew as well.

Frank Blake:

Great, well, so look, my name is Frank Blake. I’m with The Home Depot out of Atlanta, Georgia. I am privileged to have been with Home Depot now 15 years, and the only other job I’ve had, other than this, I was a captain in the US Army. I joined The Home Depot right after a little over a year overseas, and I’ve been with them ever since.

Frank Blake:

I’ve had a wide variety of different roles throughout the organization. Started in Colorado Springs, Colorado, became a store manager in store 3629 Wilmington, North Carolina, then I was a district manager in Richmond, Virginia, a district manager there in Atlanta, Georgia, and now I’m in our what we call store support center and I’m on The Home Depot Pro Team and General Manager of outside sales for the renovator, remodeler vertical at Home Depot. Again, just really honored to be joining you guys today.

Tom Houghton:

Awesome. Well, the honor is all ours. We love The Home Depot, and we love what you guys are doing for all the pros out there. So, let’s dive in. First, I want to highlight one thing in your career, or just ask more about what might be the favorite part, if you can highlight one thing about working for The Home Depot over the years?

Frank Blake:

Yeah, that’s super easy, Tom. So, my favorite thing about The Home Depot and my favorite thing about working there is that we are a values-based company. Our founders instilled in us a set of eight core values, among which are excellent customer service, building strong relationships, and in my opinion most importantly, entrepreneurial spirit. It’s pretty unusual to have a company of our size, I mean, over a hundred billion at this point, to really have at our core DNA that startup culture and the culture and core value of entrepreneurial spirit.

Frank Blake:

So I love working at Home Depot, because we’re a values-based company. I can’t tell you the number of times that there’s been a difficult decision or a view or thing we’re trying to figure out, that the answer may not be obvious right away, but when we take a step back and we look at anything through the lens of our core values, the decisions become incredibly easy.

Frank Blake:

When I think about Home Depot and Buildertrend working together, it’s exciting, because you guys are a  really values-based company too. I was impressed to learn a little bit more about BT Cares and what you guys are doing for your community, and I think it mirrors really well with The Home Depot Foundation is doing, what they’re doing in our community and how we live our core value of doing the right thing and giving back.

Frank Blake:

So look, I love Home Depot, they’ve been great to me. It’s been a really fun time, I’m looking forward to the next 15 years and more. But to answer your question, the No. 1 thing for me that I love about working there is that it’s a values-based organization.

Tom Houghton:

That’s fantastic. You alluded this to a little bit, so we’re just going to jump right in. We’re really excited to talk, obviously on this podcast, one of the main goals is talk about the new partnership that we have with The Home Depot. So I think it’s really going to benefit our listeners, our users and people who of course love The Home Depot, just like Paul and I. So, can you share a little bit about how the partnership started?

Frank Blake:

Yeah, sure, I’d be happy to. So, The Home Depot and Buildertrend partnership began over a shared goal. We wanted to equip our pro customers with what they need to effectively manage and grow their businesses. As leaders in the space, Buildertrend and The Home Depot each bring a unique perspective to the table and both know the challenges and opportunities facing today’s pros. Together, Home Depot and Buildertrend are building creative and unique solutions to help our pros save time and money. You guys both know that for our pros, time is money and vice versa, and so it’s an exciting partnership for sure.

Tom Houghton:

Absolutely.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah, well said. You’ve mentioned pro a couple of different times. I’m sure everybody knows, you should know there’s a Home Depot Pro loyalty program or Pro Xtra loyalty program. Can you just kind of speak to that for those that don’t know? What is that?

Frank Blake:

Yeah, sure, I’d be happy to. So, Pro Xtra is The Home Depot’s free loyalty program built just for our professional contractor customers. It’s not a DIY or homeowner or weekend warrior program, this is for our professional customers. It provides members with exclusive benefits that help them save time, save money, and get rewarded. Our members in Pro Xtra can easily access and manage all their Pro Xtra benefits, including organizing purchases, scanning their virtual ID, saving time at checkout. All of that is available through their easy online mobile Home Depot app.

Paul Wurth:

Cool. So you’re a contractor out there anywhere in America, because you’ve got stores everywhere. Just go to Home Depot, go to the Pro desk and sign up? Is that sort of how it works? Super simple.

Frank Blake:

Yeah, you can sign up at the Pro desk, You can sign up on homedepot.com. Any one of those ways will get you, if you’re a professional contractor, into our Pro Xtra loyalty program.

Paul Wurth:

It’s free.

Tom Houghton:

And it’s free, yeah.

Paul Wurth:

There’s no reason not to try it out.

Tom Houghton:

Exactly.

Paul Wurth:

Let’s go, all right.

Frank Blake:

It’s the best price in town.

Paul Wurth:

That’s right.

Tom Houghton:

That’s right, yeah. So, let’s talk about the Pro Xtra loyalty program a little bit more. How does this benefit builders?

Frank Blake:

Yeah, so Pro Xtra, our members benefit include volume pricing. So the more you buy, the more you save and we have volume pricing built into a lot of our key Pro categories. It includes access to exclusive brands, exclusive promotions, it allows for delivery tracking, purchase tracking. It has all your credit options in one place, and it has a lot of enhanced digital capabilities going forward. We’re building new and impressive features into that platform every single day.

Tom Houghton:

I love it. I mean, it sounds like, again, this partnership is just a match made perfectly here, because we of course continually update our software, we’re continually trying to make it better. It sounds like you’re trying to do the same thing on your guys’ end. We love to partner with companies that share that value of just wanting to make the end-user experience better and to continue to deliver more benefit to the users of that.

Frank Blake:

Yes.

Tom Houghton:

So speaking of benefits, let’s talk about what benefits are available to Buildertrend customers who take advantage of this new Home Depot partnership.

Frank Blake:

Yeah, so there’s a lot of them. I think for me, it begins with authorizing in-store purchases via text message or our text to confirm platform. That allows runners to come in or folks on a crew to come in, purchase through their parent organization. They can track it by job or PO and everything in between. Pro Xtra also helps pros run their business more efficiently. It includes the Buildertrend software, as I know you guys will talk about, and we continue, both of our organizations to collaborate on more features and ways to drive value for that customer base going forward.

Frank Blake:

I would also just mention that our members can maximize their spending power, not only by taking advantage of offers and discounts, but also through The Home Depot’s commercial credit offerings. Again, all of that is wrapped up nicely within the Pro Xtra loyalty platform.

Tom Houghton:

Again, this sounds like a fantastic win-win for Home Depot fans and Buildertrend users.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah, we’re really-

Frank Blake:

Absolutely. I mean, this is a program and platform that we’ve been working on for a long time, we’re very proud of it. Our customers have seen tremendous value in it over the years, and honestly that value is just increasing every day as we add in new capabilities. I think that more than anything, especially now, our Pro customers appreciate us investing into the space, and we get email after email and lots of comments from our customers that they appreciate all of the increased features and functionalities in the Pro Xtra app.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah, you’re listening and you don’t take advantage of the Pro Xtra app so far, go out and figure that out right away. Take a look for yourself. Also, if you’re interested in just the partnership between HD and Buildertrend, we just started it and we’re just going to continually grow and grow the different functionality and benefits there. So, you can definitely reach out to your account executive or any contact here at Buildertrend if you’re a Buildertrend user, and we can set up a meeting and go through the details with you for sure.

Frank Blake:

Yeah, absolutely. Look, our customers are excited about it. I go back to what I said about us sharing insights into the Pro customer, and I think that one thing we know is that professional contracting is a hard business, right? I mean, there’s a lot of complexity, not just on the job site and doing your trade, but also in managing the complexity of the back office operations. I think that Buildertrend and Pro Xtra app helps simplify that so that contractors can spend more time with their customers and ultimately just run a much more efficient and profitable business.

Tom Houghton:

Fantastic. Again, we’ll put more details in the show notes. Again, that’s buildertrend.com/podcast if you want to find out more about the partnership and some more details about what we’re working on with The Home Depot.

Frank Blake:

Awesome.

Paul Wurth:

And watch Tom in a van sing karaoke songs.

Frank Blake:

I’m ready for season two. I’ve been working on my costumes, I’ve been working on some different numbers. I really think you guys are sitting on a little hidden gem there, and I encourage you to go a little bit deeper on that one, Tom. I think you’ve got a gift that deserves to be shared.

Paul Wurth:

I like it. For the long-time listeners, we’ve always talked about Paul and Tom on the road.

Tom Houghton:

We have.

Paul Wurth:

The road show, doing a podcast from a convertible.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

I think we can marry these two ideas and swing down through Atlanta. We got a plan.

Frank Blake:

I’m ready to go. You guys may not know this, but also within The Home Depot, we have our own internal pro podcast for our outside sales team. I happen to host that show, and I’m proud to say that it’s the No. 1 rated podcast for pars and pro outside sales folks. So I’m sure that that means also that this is the No. 1 rated Buildertrend podcast, so congratulations to you guys for being No. 1 in the spot.

Frank Blake:

You’ve done a great job, you’ve taken a lot of pressure off of me. It’s really enjoyable to be answering the questions instead of asking them. I know that that puts the pressure on you guys to make an entertaining show, I just get to sit back and answer the questions. So, this has been a blast.

Tom Houghton:

I think the feeling’s mutual. This has been too much fun, we should do this again sometime.

Frank Blake:

No doubt, anytime. I’m ready to go and I’m still waiting outside, so just come pick me up, ready to sing.

Tom Houghton:

Fantastic. Awesome, Frank. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast and sharing your industry knowledge and telling us more about the partnership with The Home Depot. Again, we’re super excited about it. We really appreciate your team and everything that you guys have done to make this partnership fantastic.

Frank Blake:

No, it’s my pleasure. If I could just give one other shout out if it’s possible. So back pre-COVID, we would take our top pro customers from The Home Depot and meet every month in a different city around the country and have these big stadium events where we would rent out Fenway Park and we’d bring in all our customers for a pro appreciation event. I just want to say a special thank you to the Buildertrend team that would come and participate in all of those events. It was always nice to see folks there from Omaha, and you guys did a great job, and it was always fun partnering together.

Tom Houghton:

Definitely. We look forward to hopefully having more of those events when all this passes.

Frank Blake:

No doubt. Thanks again, guys.

Tom Houghton:

Appreciate it.

Paul Wurth:

Thanks Frank.

Tom Houghton:

Love what you heard? Don’t forget to rate and subscribe to our podcast so you can hear from more guests that will benefit your business. Also, please check out our show notes page for more information on what we discussed on this episode, you can find it at buildertrend.com/podcast. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time on “The Building Code.”

Paul Wurth:

Appreciate you.